Kristen Wiig is Marie Claire’s August cover girl. She looks gorgeous! The ‘Saturday Night Live’ comedian opens up with the magazine about her humble beginnings, and dreaming for a bigger and better life. “I wanted to be Justine Bateman,” she says, recalling the slyly appealing sibling on the Michael J. Fox sitcom Family Ties. “She was so cool. Or Lisa Bonet“—The Cosby Show’s resident Bohemian. “I just didn’t think it was an option, coming from a town where people don’t pack their bags and move out to Hollywood.”

Wiig came to New York from Southern California in autumn 2005 to join the cast of Saturday Night Live, bringing with her a handful of impressions (Drew Barrymore, Björk, Jessica Simpson), a few characters she’d developed while with the influential Los Angeles improvisation group The Groundlings, and a secret fear that she’d soon be run out of town on a rail. “I remember being so scared,” she says, “that after I was done with those characters—if they made it on the show—that I wouldn’t have any other ideas.”

Kristen on her boyfriend, Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti:

Not overly inclined toward personal revelation—”I am shyer than most people think”—the 38-year-old Wiig states it plain nonetheless: “I will say that I’m happier than I’ve ever been,” she says, “and I feel very lucky right now.” Why? “Where I am now. Who he is. Those are the two big ones.”

On leaving ‘SNL':

As we chat, it’s been little more than 100 hours since Wiig’s final show as a cast member on SNL, capping a seven-season run that made her a deeply beloved comedic star. “I know a lot of people probably assume, ‘Oh, she’s leaving because she is going to be doing movies now and things like that,’ which I will be,” she notes. “But I just always knew it was going to be seven and that was it. I think maybe if I were 22, I could see myself staying a little bit, but it just felt like the right time.”

Still, “it was very emotional,” she says, nursing a double-shot cappuccino. “I just wanted to get through it without breaking down in every sketch. Because nothing says comedy like breaking down.”

On her final ‘SNL’ scene, where Mick Jagger serenaded her:

“It was a very surreal moment,” she says. “You have all this stuff going on in your head, like, ‘I can’t believe seven years has gone by, and I’m going to miss all these people.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, by the way, Mick Jagger is to my right, and I just danced a waltz with him.’ So there’s that.”

I just love her – but I’m so sad to see her leave ‘SNL’. She might have been the only reason I watched the show in the first place. I can’t imagine it without her!! That being said, I can’t wait to see where her career goes from now! ‘Bridesmaids’ is hands down one of my all-time favorite movies. She’s pure genius!